so that's had a big, big role in, you know, getting this deficit. it cost about $1 million for every troop that we have in afghanistan. so i think that people are recognizing that defense has got to be part of this. and secretary gates basically has played a shell game. you give him too much credit. yeah, he said let's spend more on the state department, but he didn't want to take any money from defense. where did he think we were going to get it? he pretended that he was cutting the defense budget, but he never did. for example, in 2008, when he presented what he thought would be his last budget to congress, the 2009 budget under the bush administration, he said by 2012, we'll need about $543 billion in the base budget. know what he asked for this year? $553. this is after he pretended all these cuts. we've got to make some real cuts now if we're going to get this deficit under control. >> what kind of leadership do you think it's going to be needed and can be expected in order to get something like that done? republicans obviously are really pound